


Inside the Calm Minds

by boomerbird10



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen, Pining and silliness, Tony & Ziva being dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23711776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boomerbird10/pseuds/boomerbird10
Summary: When Ziva asks Tony for help, he will always drop everything and go. He'll find her, ready to do whatever she needs, no questions asked. If what she needs is protection from an irrational fear this time, though, he might just make fun of her while he's at it...
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	Inside the Calm Minds

**Author's Note:**

> A little pining, a little action, a little teasing, and a lot of Tony and Ziva being dorks… enjoy! If you're afraid of geese, however, this story might be one to skip.

"Inside the calm minds, great ideas swim serenely like the morning geese of the misty lakes!"

-Mehmet Murat Ildan

* * *

Tony is not suspicious at all about Ziva's absence this morning. He hasn't even noticed, which is so silly, isn't it, because her desk is right across from his and he's supposed to be a detective and whatnot. Though he may occasionally let his eyes wander around the room, it's not like he keeps intentionally glancing at her empty chair, wondering what's keeping her, thinking about how she's always here early because she can't turn off a body clock set to Mossad time even years after starting at NCIS.

He certainly isn't glancing at his phone periodically, wondering if she's texted. It wouldn't even occur to him to casually ask McGee if he's heard from her—especially not twice. He would never consider casually walking out to his car to grab something from the glove compartment—he takes napkins, the first thing that occurs to him—just to see if he can see her car while he's out there.

Luckily, it's a quiet day so far, so he gets away with not doing any of those things just like Ziva gets away with not coming in on time.

After an hour and a half of sitting at his desk, overwhelmed with burning curiosity, he hears his phone ring. "You've reached Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, what can I do ya for?"

"Tony!" It's Ziva, and she sounds out of breath.

"Ziva!" he replies, more emphatically than he means to. He clears his throat and tries again. "Ziva," he says more calmly. "You're running a little behind today, aren't you?"

"Yes," she answers immediately, and her lack of an argument in response to his gentle jab makes him suspicious. "I need your help."

"With what? Are you okay?"

"I will be fine," she assures him quickly, but there's a note in her voice that sounds almost… nervous? "Are you busy?"

"Well, I'm at work, so no, I'm not busy. When have you ever known me to work at work?"

His joke falls flat or is completely ignored, one or the other, because Ziva doesn't mention it or laugh. "Good. Then I need you to come meet me. Now."

"Um, let me just…" He looks up at Gibbs. "Hey, boss?"

Gibbs looks up, impatiently waiting to see why he's been called.

"Can I go meet Z—"

That's when he hears Ziva hissing "do not tell anyone that you are meeting me, Tony!" and he abruptly stops talking.

"You asking a question or not, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asks shortly.

"Uh, yeah. Can I go… well, do you mind if I run a quick errand?" He wishes Ziva had mentioned right off the bat where she is, because Tony has no way of knowing how long this thing she needs help with will take. He can hardly ask now, though, not when she's forbidden him to mention her name and Gibbs is already watching.

There's a pause, and then Gibbs shrugs. "Keep your phone on," he says rather than directly answering, and he turns back to what he was working on.

Tony takes that as a yes. "Alright," he tells Ziva in a low voice. "I'm coming. Where are you?"

She gives him an address in Georgetown—it's not far, only 15 minutes if there's not traffic. "Alright. I'll be there in just a second. You sure you're okay?"

"Just hurry," she emphasizes instead of answering.

He wonders idly why everyone is avoiding his questions this morning. "Will do," he comments, giving up. "Hang tight."

He ends the call and types the address into his cell phone's GPS app. "Be back in an hour or less, boss," he calls to Gibbs before going. Tony can feel McGee eyeing him curiously, but he's been sworn to secrecy and has no information to share, anyway.

As he walks to his car, he checks out the address—it's in a small business park in the middle of the city. He could be wrong because there are a lot of businesses in a confined area, but he thinks it's a doctor's office that Ziva's sending him to. He really does hope she's okay, and once he's on his way, he speeds more than usual in his hurry to go make sure that she _is_ okay.

He parks his car at the right address and sees that he's right; it's a doctor's office. He spots Ziva's car and decides that it doesn't look like she's had an accident or anything, which is good. He can't find the Israeli herself, though… her car is locked and she's not standing outside waiting for him.

Giving up on finding her organically, he dials her phone.

She picks up almost immediately. "Tony?"

"I'm here. Where are you?"

"I am inside. If you walk through the door, you will see me."

"Um, alright. See you in a mo'."

Completely nonplussed, he heads inside and finds Ziva sitting in a waiting room chair, wringing her hands. "Hey," he greets her cautiously, observing her behavior with growing concern. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

She barely greets him before peering out the windows of the glass-paneled door he just walked through. "Are they still there?" she asks, her voice tight and maybe a little anxious.

"Who, Ziva? You're starting to scare me."

Then she looks him dead in the face, her eyes boring into his. With complete seriousness, she ominously answers "the geese."

Tony blinks at her, thinking that either he misheard or that she hasn't finished her thought yet, but no clearer explanations immediately emerge. "What, you mean like, the birds, geese? Or do you have some stalkers or something that you call geese? Is that a super secret agency named geese that I don't know about?"

"The birds," she confirms, brushing off his other suggestions. "Are they still outside the door?"

Absolutely convinced that she's messing with him, Tony leans back and looks through the glass. The panes are thick and a little difficult to see through, but he's pretty sure he can see some dark, bird-shaped things. While he can't remember noticing geese as he walked in, he was also rather preoccupied when he did. "Um. I can see something that looks sort of goose-shaped, yeah."

Ziva sighs deeply, and then she lifts her hand in a little shooing motion. "Go check, Tony, please?"

"Are you serious, Ziva?"

"Yes!"

Shaking his head and hoping that all the answers are coming soon, he does as asked and walks back outside. There are four Canadian geese within a few feet of where he's situated, all standing around peaceably and picking at the little strip of grass between the building at the sidewalk.

"They're out there," Tony confirms when he goes back inside, and he just cannot understand why that makes Ziva set her eyes in a hard line. "Talk to me, Ziva."

"I cannot get to my car," she tells him.

"Because of the geese?"

"Yes."

"I'm pretty sure none of them are going to carjack you, Ziva," he mocks before he can stop himself.

She makes a face at him. "No, they may not, but they will certainly attack me if I try to go past them."

Tony makes a face right back. "No, they won't. They didn't even look up when I went out just now."

"That is because you were by yourself and it is _me_ that they hate!"

Suddenly, something dawns on Tony that he really should have seen sooner. It just seems so out-of-character for Ziva, though, that it hadn't figured into what he considers to be the realm of possibility:

Ziva David is genuinely afraid of geese, and from the looks of it, it's a pretty strong fear.

"You're scared of them." It's not a question, and she doesn't try to deny it, just nodding. "You, Ziva David, the most fearless woman in the universe, the chick who would go solo to face the Four Horsemen themselves, a Glock in one hand and a SIG in the other… you're telling me that _that woman_ is afraid of _birds_?"

She flushes, somewhere between mildly ashamed and angry. "Do not make fun of me!" she snaps. "Geese have beaks, Tony! And _teeth_! How unnatural is it for a bird to have teeth!?"

"They _don't_ have teeth," he argues automatically, though it doesn't matter at all. "Ducky told me about it once—and _Ducky Mallard_ would know, wouldn't he?" he adds, amused by his own joke. "He said they're just pointy parts on the bill, not bits of bone."

Ziva looks so unimpressed that Tony thinks she might be considering risking her own life to sacrifice him to the beasts outside. "I do not care," she tells him bluntly.

"Okay, okay. I'll stop. So this is why you're late today?"

"Not entirely. I had a doctor's appointment. As I tried to leave, though, those horrible creatures attacked me."

"Wait, really? Like, they physically tried to hurt you?" He's been thinking her fear is an irrational one, but maybe it's not.

Instead of just saying yes, she holds up her arm to show him the sleeve of her cardigan—there is a sharp tear through the fabric. "I ran back in here. Ever since then, I have been waiting for them to go away, but they are not moving anywhere."

The urge to laugh is so tempting, but Tony nobly holds back… for now. "Alright, then," he decides. "What do you want me to do?"

"You have to have my back while I run to my car."

"Ziva, you can't seriously think they're after you personally! I don't think they hold grudges—what did you do to them, anyway?"

"I do not know, but they have it in for me! Every one of them always does."

Apparently, this is not a new fear. Tony's learning more and more about Ziva every second today, and he's frankly delighted. This is humanizing her so much, aside from the fact that it's just… funny. He's never going to let her live it down.

Impatient with waiting for an answer, Ziva snaps her fingers to get his attention. "Will you help me, or not?"

"Sure. It'll be fine—we can just _Jurassic Park_ this whole thing. You'll be the kids in the car, trying to escape the T-rex, and I'll be Jeff Goldblum with a flare."

"I have not seen that movie, so I will need more of an explanation than that."

Tony laughs. "It's pretty straightforward. I'll distract them with… something." He pauses, and then brightens. "Here, give me your sweater. I'll wave it at them like I'm a bullfighter, that should keep 'em busy. You go out behind me once they're not paying attention. You'll be fine once you're in your car, right?"

"I think so."

Tony still seriously doubts the birds will care at all about their exit, but he's game to look a little ridiculous if Ziva is. "Okay, let's do it, then."

Ziva pulls off the cardigan and hands it over. They both go to stand in front of the door, looking outside, and for a second, it feels like they're on some high stakes takedown mission. They both automatically lower their voices as if there are perps lurking who can't be allowed to overhear. "Right," Tony whispers. "I'll go on three. One… two… three!"

He jumps out the door, brandishing Ziva's sweater, and absolutely nothing remarkable happens. One of the geese looks up for a second, but it dismisses him and returns to hunting through the grass. Tony looks at Ziva's outline through the glass and shrugs. It looks like she holds up her fingers in the same countdown Tony just completed, and when she gets to three, she bursts through the door behind him.

There's instantly an explosion of ornithological activity; Tony would be shocked if only he had the time to think about it. All four geese are suddenly honking angrily and pecking at Tony's legs as they try to get around him to Ziva. He wards them off as best as he can with the sweater, picking his feet up repeatedly in some strange approximation of a leprechaun's jig to avoid being bitten.

He hears Ziva's car door close behind her and he breathes a sigh of relief, but it doesn't last long. As soon as their preferred target leaves their grasp, the feathery little terrors start trying to attack Tony in earnest. Abandoning the diversion tactics, he turns around and hauls ass to his car. He can see Ziva through her driver's seat window, visibly cheering him on, and he laughs exuberantly as if he's just accomplished something magnificent. They give each other thumbs ups across the parking lot and head in their own cars to NCIS.

Tony spends the drive back much like he spent his first hour at work today—that is, definitely not thinking about Ziva. He doesn't reflect on the very real relief he saw in her expression when he agreed to help with the Great Goose War of 2012. He specifically also doesn't remember how pretty the blush of embarrassment looked on her cheeks when he made fun of her surprising phobia. There's no way he wastes time musing about the pride and self-deprecating humor shining on her face when they excitedly cheered for one another, separated by fifteen feet and two vehicles but celebrating the same absurd thing.

He's torn from his not-thoughts by his phone ringing as he pulls into his usual parking space back at work; this time, he looks at the caller ID before answering and sees that it's Ziva. "Make it back safely?" he asks, amused.

"I did," she replies, but there's darkness in her tone again. "We have a problem, however."

"What is it?" Tony quips. "More geese?"

The silence he hears in response tells him that his tongue-in-cheek remark was actually exactly right. "You've got to be kidding me," he says in disbelief.

"I wish I was."

He leans out the window and tries to see past the other cars in his row, but he still can't get a visual. "Where are they?"

"By the entrance to the building."

"How many?"

"I see two, but there could be more," Ziva shares grimly.

"Those little bastards. And you think these two will attack you like the ones in Georgetown did?"

"There is a very good chance of that, yes."

This time, he takes her seriously, remembering a peck he received to the left shin and shuddering. "I believe you. You ready to run again?"

"I live my _life_ ready to run."

"Ha, that does sound like you. Okay, then. _Jurassic Park_ one more time?"

" _Jurassic Park_ it is," she agrees.

"Right. I'll get out and head toward them now. Good thing I've still got your cardigan, I guess. Stay on the line—I'll tell you when you should go."

"I will not hang up," Ziva promises.

Tony gets out of his car and locks the doors, feeling immensely farcical as he picks his way through the parking lot. Once he rounds the corner, though, he can clearly see the geese Ziva mentioned, and he approaches them with more caution than he has ever used around a bird in some forty-odd years of life. "Almost there," he murmurs to Ziva.

"I can see you."

"Getting into position… ready now. When I say run, you run. Good luck, Ziva."

"You, too, Tony."

"Ready… set… GO!"

With that he starts rapidly flapping the sweater around again, not caring how stupid he inevitably looks to anyone passing by—and this is the Navy Yard, were there are always people passing by. Regardless, he focuses on keeping both animals in his line of sight.

Hearing quick footsteps thudding on the pavement behind him, he redoubles his efforts, willing the birds to focus on him. One does, but the other takes flight, soaring over Tony's head and aiming straight for Ziva. "Run, Ziva, run!" he cries, feeling like Jenny in Forrest Gump, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees her hurry through the door. She made it! Now it's his turn.

He takes a bite to the ankle but ignores it, sprinting toward the same entrance through which Ziva just disappeared. He bursts through with no further injuries, and he and Ziva high five, grinning and panting. "Safe!" Tony exclaims like a baseball umpire, and laughing breathlessly, they both pile into the elevator and head to the correct floor.

"How have you managed to keep this to yourself for so long if every freakin' goose you come across wants to eat you for dinner?"

"Believe it or not, Tony, I do not come across many geese. I believe they avoid me when they can and attack me when they cannot."

Ziva's voice is teasing, but Tony's sort of inclined to agree with her assessment.

"Tony?"

"Mm?"

"Thank you for your help, and for not teasing me much about it."

"I haven't teased you much about it _yet_ ," Tony corrects cheerfully, and Ziva glares at him.

"If you mention this to _anyone_ , I will kill you and feed your bits to every goose in Washington," she warns.

"No!" Tony pleads sarcastically. "Not my bits!"

Ziva wrinkles her nose at him as the elevator dings to announce their arrival, and he's pleased with the mirth he sees lurking under that expression.

They still haven't had quite enough time to catch their breath when they get off. Neither pays any mind to the fact that they're both dotted with sweat from a combination of exercise and adrenaline, or that their faces are red… at least not until McGee gives them a very strange look as they sit down behind their respective desks. "What have you two been up to?" he asks suspiciously.

Tony glances at the sweater he's still holding and then looks up to meet Ziva's eye. She shrugs a little, not in possession of a ready answer, either.

When nobody answers, McGee stands and makes his way to the space between their desks, glancing back and forth. "I know you're up to something. Come on, I've had no active cases to work on all morning. If you've got something, I want in."

Tony glances toward Gibbs' space, expecting their boss to put a stop to this conversation, but he's not there. "You're imagining things, probie," he tells McGee in resignation, realizing he and Ziva will have to get themselves out of this talk if they don't want to share their mutually traumatizing wildlife story. " _We_ haven't been doing anything besides riding the elevator at the same time. We weren't even together."

"Yes, you were. You're both out of breath, sweaty, red-faced… who've you been chasing?"

"We were having sex, McGee," Ziva tells McGee emotionlessly, and both McGee and Tony turn to gape at her. She meets Tony's eye and gives him the tiniest, slyest wink.

McGee recovers quickly. "Ugh, you know what? Fine. If you don't want to tell me, don't tell me. There's no need to lie."

Tony quickly gets into this game, always ready to torture his long-suffering friend. "Hey, you asked the question, McFreaky. Ziva was just answering. You don't want to hear about the way we made sweet, _sweet_ love in the conference room?"

McGee frowns. "You," he says, pointing to Ziva, "and you," he continues, pointing to Tony, "are incorrigible."

"It was truly mind blowing," Ziva reveals, smirking, as if she didn't hear him at all.

"Best sex I've ever had," Tony agrees, making some obnoxious hip movements to make his chair squeak.

"Forget it!" McGee pronounces. "I'm going to get coffee. _Please_ be done with this conversation by the time I get back."

He stalks off, and in his absence, Tony and Ziva look back at each other, laughing. Tony can't help but appreciate the way her eyes sparkle when she crinkles them up like that, and he finds himself wishing that the story they were telling McGee is the truth.

When Ziva settles down and starts working on her computer, though, he knows that's not in the cards for them…

...no matter how much he might want it.


End file.
